


Mayflowers

by presidentofdumbass



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur Finds Out About Merlin’s Magic (Merlin), Crying Merlin, Episode: s01 e10, Flowers, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending (kind of), Hurt Merlin (Merlin), King Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Magic Revealed, Memories, Merlin's Magic Revealed (Merlin), POV Third Person, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24095608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/presidentofdumbass/pseuds/presidentofdumbass
Summary: Merlin lost his best friend only hours ago and now he's sitting in the clearing where they used to play as children. He's sitting there amongst the flowers they used to play with, with Arthur Pendragon. The future king of Camelot, talking about something he knows he shouldn't be.
Kudos: 136





	Mayflowers

Arthur found his servant cross legged with his knees up and his arms wrapped around them. A hand gripping at the other as to stabilize the position, although it truly made no difference to Merlin. His tears fell all the same and his heart hurt despite all he was surrounded by. 

The truth was that he couldn’t do anything but sit there amongst the sea of flowers. The ones that lined the hidden clearing, the white and violet colours almost swallowing him entirely, as he secretly prayed they would. 

“Are you alright?” Arthur asked though it was a stupid thing to do. 

Arthur knew otherwise. He knew it. 

It had only been a few hours since Merlin watched his friend die and be burnt upon his funeral pyre. How could anyone be alright after such a thing?

Arthur took a seat beside the mourning servant and watched as Merlin kept his eyes on a small patch of the flowers. Doing nothing to stop the tears that fell into his lap; caring not for Arthur’s opinion on the subject, for even if he did, he feared they wouldn’t stop either way..

Merlin knew he could have saved him. He could have healed him or better yet, he could have come alone to the village as he had planned in the first place. He could have faced the bandits by himself. Then no one would have died, especially not Will. 

Merlin took a deep and despairing breath. “We used to come here as children. It was our secret base and there’d always- there’d always be one little patch of mayflowers when we first arrived, always growing as our smiles did. Blossoming along the floor as we laughed.” A cruel and sorrowful smile stretching across his face as he looked to Arthur with tears pooling in his sunken eyes. 

Arthur felt his throat thicken with the insinuation that magic might have made it so.

He’d always been taught to hate the damned thing but some of his encounters with those who possessed it over the past few weeks… They’d been so innocent. Like the druid boy or his father.

They bore no hatred within them, no evil, with no dangerous nature to be found and yet they were evil by Uther’s standards. Abominations who only intended on destroying the kingdom he worked so hard to build. Seeking to wreak havoc and kill the Pendragons along with their people. 

Like with Will. He might have shown disdain for the prince but he was scared, it was the easier thing to be. To blame and bring hate upon someone else instead of fighting for what was right. Arthur couldn’t blame him for his fear. Arthur felt the opposite of such an emotion towards the boy. Even though he shouldn’t. Will had saved him after all. Taking an arrow to the back for him instead of placing it in Arthur’s as Arthur was told sorcerers would do.

He’d been Merlin’s lifelong friend and seemed so kind to him and the other villagers. Showing no sign of a single sliver of evil within his person. Nothing that would have made Arthur believe him to be a sorcerer- expect for the wind that he conjured, of course. But everything else, everything he’d been told of sorcerers... Will hadn’t shown any of those traits. He hadn’t been dangerous. 

Still, Arthur had seen so many villainous sorcerers. Been nearly killed by them and for three singular sorcerers be good or innocent? It didn’t excuse how many evil sorcerers there were. It didn’t mean his father’s law against them was mistaken. It couldn’t be.

“I expect he did this then?” Arthur asked in response. It was obviously implied yet Arthur felt it needed to be said. That if he said it he’d disprove his father’s ‘well-advised’ hatred for magic. That he’d be free to see them as normal people and not have to kill them for being themselves or kill Merlin for conspiring with one. He hated it - killing people just because they had magic or for helping those with the gift - but his father did hold a strong case. 

They were evil, all of them. Arthur just wished against it.

Merlin looked upon the prince, straight in the eyes for the first time since it had happened. So much sorrow buried within them. So much that he wanted to talk about, to say and yet he couldn’t. There was just so much pain. And Arthur would never know.

“Do you really believe that he was evil because of his magic?” 

Merlin prayed for the answer he knew he’d never get. Prayed that Arthur would say he didn’t believe Will was evil. That he didn’t have the same views as his father and that sorcerers were just people. That he didn’t hate them… Didn’t hate Merlin.

That thickness in Arthur’s throat came back and he coughed in hopes of clearing it, though it didn’t work. 

“He was a sorcerer, Merlin. All sorcerer’s are evil.”

‘He was my friend.’ Merlin almost said. Biting his tongue in hopes of stopping the flood of words he wished to spill. 

‘I’m the sorcerer. He lied to protect me from you. Did he have to protect me from you?’ He yearned to ask.

Merlin wanted to whisper such words in Arthur’s ear so that he could hear the bitterness in his voice. The soft and underlying pain that harboured Merlin’s every motion. 

Merlin felt sick to his stomach and Arthur nearly felt sick to his too. He didn’t want it to be true but he knew it to be- or more so believed it to be. He knew that sorcerers had tried to murder him and his family a hundred times over and to judge them on the account of three people instead of all others that preached his death would be idiotic and unprincly. 

Merlin’s gaze fell back upon the flowers and Arthur noticed the small gulp Merlin did. Swallowing all he wished to scream into the depths of his heart. Into a place where Arthur would never know of.Not truly.

Arthur could see the tears gathering in his servant’s eyes again. He knew that Will couldn’t have been evil but his kind was and that made him so too. It made him evil.

Merlin wiped his sleeve across his eyes, the fabric growing heavy with remnants of his tears. 

How could anyone hate an entire people? He thought to himself. I was just trying to have a quiet moment alone to grieve and here Arthur is making everything about magic and his hate for it. He says that sorcerers are the cruel and evil ones but that's him and HIS people. Sorcerers only go after the Pendragons because the Pendragons go after them. It’s not their fault that they want vengeance for the thousands of people Uther has murdered.

Merlin couldn’t believe that Arthur could hate him. 

He couldn’t stomach it. 

Few words spilled from his mouth after that. Few words that he never should have let escape came to mind. Few words that he had the better mind to run after to stop before they reached Arthur’s ears.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t run after them like he usually did. He was too tired.

And it was true, he could have played it off. Found some way to weave his way around the comment and keep his secret hidden but he didn’t want to. 

He shouldn’t have had to. 

“Am I evil?”

Maybe Arthur would take his blade right through his chest. Maybe he’d chain him up and take him back to Camelot to be put onto a pyre and burned or allow his head to be chopped clean off by the executioner.

Yes, all those options were plausible but he couldn’t keep this secret anymore.

He’d hid it for so long. From his friends and what he felt to be family and it hurt too much to keep the truth locked away behind all manners of walls. Locked away in his heart. 

Arthur froze. He didn’t know if he had heard Merlin right or if he was just playing some evil trick on him but it didn’t matter. He’d said it and however obscure a confession it was, Arthur understood. 

God how he wished he didn’t understand.

\--------

“What?” The hurt could be heard in his voice, ringing through the clearing like a songbird to the morning.

Merlin wanted to be angry, furious with Arthur. He’d been trying to rile himself up with all that talk about how Arthur and Uther were the problem. That they were the reason so many people were dead but it didn’t work. It only made that hollow and empty feel in Merlin’s chest grow. 

It only made the tears come back and that burning sensation in his throat grow hotter and hotter, cutting through the words he tried to form like a sword.

He took a breath, a short and painful one as he elaborated. He needed the weight of the lies and the pain to be lifted. Even if only for a second before the fear of death would be invited in.

“You heard me. Am I evil? I do have magic afterall.” He looked up as Arthur stood from his spot next to Merlin, shocked from what he was hearing.

“Maybe I am,” He stopped, his tears threatening to consume him, “because I could have saved him, you know. I could have saved everyone but instead I chose to keep my secret. Hide who I am and for what? Only to watch so many of my people die by your hands. To watch as your people stick them on pyres and burn them alive because you’re too scared of our powers to realise that we’re just people too. I’m just so sick of lying to save my own skin. So sick of putting other people's lives on the line so that I, the supposed saviour of Albion, can ‘live to see you relinquish the law on magic’ when I know that that day will never come. That I’ll save you a thousand times over just to see you condemn the few sorcerers left in this land to death.”

Arthur almost fell back down as the weight of his own troubles to hold. He’d heard tales like this from so many sorcerer's before Merlin but they’d never struck a blow so hard as Merlin just did. And he didn’t even look like he was finished.

“And it was me who made these flowers bloom. Will never had magic, he just said he did to protect me. We used to come out here as children and one day, I stared too long at a small patch of mayflowers. My eyes turned gold and flowers began sprouting every which way. Will thought it was amazing but my mother told me to hide my powers… She told me I’d be killed for them. That that fireword I had collected early that day would be used to make my pyre and that I’d be burned on it because people would be scared of me. I was just a child. I never should have been subject to so much fear. And now a dragon tells me I’m the greatest warlock to ever live, that my destiny is to help you make Albion a better place for all magic users but I can’t. I can’t do it. I probably won’t even live long enough to see you be crowned king.”

“Merlin…” Arthur had too much to say and yet not enough words say it with. He was feeling so much, too much to explain. He wanted to hit Merlin over the head for lying to him but he understood that Merlin thought he’d get him killed and he probably would have not too long ago. But Merlin was his friend, he’d do anything for him now. Or then, a few minutes back, before Merlin told him, he would have done anything for him then but now he didn’t know. 

“I don’t know what to say to you.” 

Merlin wiped his tears as his friend’s eyes bore into him and looked up at the future king of Camelot and chuckled, “I don’t know what I want you to say to me.” 

Maybe it was the cool air of the early morning or the sweet scent of the mayflowers surrounding them but there was a calm and free tone in that said air. There wasn’t anyone else around to take Merlin to the dungeons, there wasn’t anyone to attack them or an awful king to say that magic in all forms was evil.

There was nothing tethering them to their lives but themselves, everything else was just memories. 

Memories that had no say in how they should act or what they should say.

It was just them and they needed to say what needed to be said. 

“I was always taught to hate magic because it was evil and dangerous but I never liked the executions. And then Mordred and his father came to Camelot and they were so innocent and didn’t bear a single ill-ridden thought. It was then that I started to question my father’s promises of… Your kind’s evilness and now… Well, you’re not evil or dangerous. You’re just an idiot.” 

Merlin grinned, while Arthur just sat there explaining how he felt for what was probably the first time ever. 

Arthur’s own small smile faded, “That wasn’t an act was it? You being how you were?”

Merlin’s chest felt lighter, the hot and burning sensation lifted from his chest and throat. He just sighed after that, feeling that sad feeling return at the knowledge that his friend might have thought that he was a total liar and that nothing they had done together was real. 

“I might have lied to you about my magic but that was the only bit I lied about Arthur. I was always the most myself around you as I could be.”

Arthur’s jaw flexed as his eyebrows furrowed further than they had already been, “I’m sorry you couldn’t be... Your whole self around me.”

“It’s not your fault your father is afraid of us.” 

“Well, I’m sorry I was.” They both smiled like it was for the first time. Like they could breath without the air being in short supply and it felt euphoric.

“Are you saying you were afraid of me?” Merlin grinned widely as more of the sun hit the sky and it turned bright orange. 

Arthur nudged his friend, “Of course not, you, Merlin, are genuinely pathetic.” Arthur held out his hand as he got up from his spot amongst the flowers. 

Merlin laughed this time, “You realize that I could kick your ass. People say I’m the most powerful sorcerer to have ever lived, you know.” He grabbed Arthur’s hand and jumped up.

Though, as they began to walk back Arthur frowned at him, wanting an explanation for that whole thing anyway but also looking at how Merlin looked back upon the mayflowers in the clearing. 

Like he felt like he was disrespecting Will by laughing and that to leave would mean that he didn’t care or that he had forgotten what Will had done for him and that he even ever existed at all. 

Arthur unfortunately knew the feeling well after having so many good men lost to battles and attacks. Though that definitely wasn’t the same, Arthur had lost knights. Merlin lost his best friend. 

“You should bring some mayflowers back. You can plant them there to remember him by.” Arthur said, slightly pushing Merlin back to the clearing as to get him to go grab some. 

Merlin just sent a soft and kind smile back to him, a smile he never thought he’d see on a sorcerer’s face. 

He went and grabbed some and came back, giving a handful to Arthur and carrying the rest. 

“So you’re supposed to be the most powerful sorcerer to have ever lived?” Arthur mocked, huffing as he carried a few mayflowers in his hands. 

Merlin smiled at him again, teeth showing and eyes wrinkling. “Yeah and now that you know I can finally get some recognition for all the times I’ve saved you and all the times I’m going to save you.”

“Who says I need saving?” Arthur replied with almost hurt in his voice. 

“Pfft, you do sire. You’re even clumsier than I am and you don’t even realise it.”


End file.
